"The March of the Mercury Militia" Part 1

On November 10, 2009, I was invited to give a presentation to the Purdue Skeptics Society. My presentation, titled "The March of the Mercury Militia," concerned the motivations and harm caused by the antivaccination movement as well as the benefits and extreme safety of vaccination. This is Part 1 of the presentation. The other parts:

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFlxsf6Zm1Q
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcM8lYg8xf4
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amGggN3-1JU
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWSHRLej7kQ
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qcsuJhr-90
Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__aq3J-WB44

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• antivaccination
• vaccination
• autism
• skeptic
• skeptics
• Purdue
• Lafayette
• Indiana
• West Lafayette
• skepticism
• anti-antivaccination
• Jenny McCarthy
• Jay Gordon
• Age of Autism
• critical
• thinking
• facilitated communication
• H1N1
• flu vaccine
• green our vaccines
• thimerosal
• mercury
• mercury militia
• Andrew Wakefield
• Purdue Skeptics
• Don Riefler

[NWOpartycrasher]

Oh yeah mercury is good for the brain, its goooooooood!!!!!! LMFAO

[TheBronzeDog]

A simple concept that joygarner has been ignoring: The dose makes the poison.

Toxicity isn't some magical, objective trait. Toxicity is relative to what it comes into contact with. The human body is an amazingly complex collection of self-sustaining chemical reactions. It has great self-protection and self-healing measures. Because of that, it can tolerate some things. One ion of mercury isn't going to wreak havoc, otherwise fish would be banned. We can tolerate small doses of many things.

[TheBronzeDog]

Let's look at the profit potentials:

Pharmaceutical companies:

Income: One-time expenses with a few booster shots.

Cost, if you believe the anti-vaxxers: Paying for absolute control of information in an era where information flows freely.

Anti-vaxxers: Untested industrial chelators sold as "food supplements" to avoid scrutiny in the US, regular chelation treatments that have caused deaths, infinite kinds of "detox" fads, diet books, grants from lawyers for fishing expeditions.

Cost: Not much.

[TheBronzeDog]

Don't forget the massive straw man about us saying "mercury is good".

Favorite of political spin doctors: Lying about your opponents' beliefs to score cheap rhetorical points.

[actionskeptic]

You can't just throw the word "logically" in as an adverb and make your argumentative process logical. What you've been doing is emotive expression, fallacious reasoning, subject changing, and ignoring the basics of modern science. You have yet to put together a coherent argument or present solid evidence for your case.

Evidence or STFU.

By the way, the comparison is apt: if you think mercury in a compound is the same as mercury out of a compound, then you should think water is explosive.

[actionskeptic]

There's a difference between "blocked" and "lost due to inadequate evidence" or "thrown out due to lack of standing or complete absurdity." Just because authority thinks you're wrong doesn't mean you're right.

Hell, it may be a good indication that you are, in fact, wrong.

[actionskeptic]

Stop dodging. You refuse to answer questions or present evidence, you just keep changing the subject and saying the same old things in different words.

Evidence or STFU.

[TheBronzeDog]

They were "blocked" for the same reasons Creationism was blocked: Bad science!

You routinely mock basic chemistry. Wakefield evades ethical oversight and performs basic statistical errors. You try to turn science upside-down so that you can sell raw powdered industrial chelators as a "dietary supplement" to avoid the testing requirements we force Big Pharma into performing.

You repeatedly lie about what real doctors say. Courts don't like people who get caught red-handed at lying.

[joygarner]

There are no "profits" to be made. Lawsuits against big pharma are blocked at every level.

[TheBronzeDog]

Completely missing the point. You've been busy arguing that a mercury compound is no different than elemental mercury (why else would you lie by calling thimerosal "mercury"), hence, you obviously believe that water is an explosive because it is a hydrogen compound.

Can't face your self-contradiction? That, my friend, is known as cognitive dissonance. It happens when your brain notices the inconsistency between your lies.